Libya Warnings Were Plentiful, but Unspecific

Investigators had little access to the American Mission compound in Benghazi immediately after the September attack.Credit
Mohammad Hannon/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the Obama administration received intelligence reports that Islamic extremist groups were operating training camps in the mountains near the Libyan city and that some of the fighters were “Al Qaeda-leaning,” according to American and European officials.

The warning about the camps was part of a stream of diplomatic and intelligence reports that indicated that the security situation throughout the country, and particularly in eastern Libya, had deteriorated sharply since the United States reopened its embassy in Tripoli after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in September 2011.

By June, Benghazi had experienced a string of assassinations as well as attacks on the Red Cross and a British envoy’s motorcade. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the September attack, e-mailed his superiors in Washington in August alerting them to “a security vacuum” in the city. A week before Mr. Stevens died, the American Embassy warned that Libyan officials had declared a “state of maximum alert” in Benghazi after a car bombing and thwarted bank robbery.

In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, the circumstances surrounding the attack on the Benghazi compound have emerged as a major political issue, as Republicans, led by their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, have sought to lay blame for the attack on President Obama, who they argued had insufficiently protected American lives there.

Interviews with American officials and an examination of State Department documents do not reveal the kind of smoking gun Republicans have suggested would emerge in the attack’s aftermath such as a warning that the diplomatic compound would be targeted and that was overlooked by administration officials.

What is clear is that even as the State Department responded to the June attacks, crowning the Benghazi compound walls with concertina wire and setting up concrete barriers to thwart car bombs, it remained committed to a security strategy formulated in a very different environment a year earlier.

In the heady early days after the fall of Colonel Qaddafi’s government, the administration’s plan was to deploy a modest American security force and then increasingly rely on trained Libyan personnel to protect American diplomats — a policy that reflected White House apprehensions about putting combat troops on the ground as well as Libyan sensitivities about an obtrusive American security presence.

In the following months, the State Department proceeded with this plan. In one instance, State Department security officials replaced the American military team in Tripoli with trained Libyan bodyguards, while it also maintained the number of State Department security personnel members at the Benghazi compound around the minimum recommended level.

Questions at Home

But the question on the minds of some lawmakers is why the declining security situation did not prompt a fundamental rethinking of the security needs by the State Department and the White House. Three Congressional investigations and a State Department inquiry are now examining the attack, which American officials said included participants from Ansar al-Shariah, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Muhammad Jamal network, a militant group in Egypt.

“Given the large number of attacks that had occurred in Benghazi that were aimed at Western targets, it is inexplicable to me that security wasn’t increased,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, one of the panels holding inquiries.

Defending their preparations, State Department officials have asserted that there was no specific intelligence that warned of a large-scale attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, which they asserted was unprecedented. The department said it was careful to weigh security with diplomats’ need to meet with Libyan officials and citizens.

“The lethality of an armed, massed attack by dozens of individuals is something greater than we’ve ever seen in Libya over the last period that we’ve been there,” Patrick F. Kennedy, the State Department’s under secretary for management, told reporters at a news conference on Oct. 10.

But David Oliveira, a State Department security officer who was stationed in Benghazi from June 2 to July 5, said he told members and staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he recalled thinking that if 100 or more assailants sought to breach the mission’s walls, “there was nothing that we could do about it because we just didn’t have the manpower, we just didn’t have the facilities.”

In developing a strategy to bring about the fall of Colonel Qaddafi, Mr. Obama walked a fine line between critics of any American involvement in Libya and those like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who advocated a stronger American leadership role. Mr. Obama’s approach — a NATO air campaign supported by the United States — was a success.

After Colonel Qaddafi’s fall, Mr. Obama proceeded with equal caution. He approved a plan to send to Tripoli a 16-member Site Security Team, a military unit that included explosive-ordnance personnel, medics and other specialists. “Day-to-day diplomatic security decisions were managed by career State Department professional staff,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

A Temporary Stay

From the start, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security advised the embassy’s security officer, Eric A. Nordstrom, that he needed to develop an “exit strategy” so that the Tripoli-based team could be replaced by Libyan guards and American civilian officials.

Charlene Lamb, one of the department’s senior diplomatic security officials, told members of the House oversight committee last month that by June, one of her aides and Mr. Nordstrom had identified a need for 21 security positions and that 16 of them were to be filled by Libyan bodyguards. Americans were to fill the remaining slots, and two assistant regional security officers were also to be sent.

The security arrangements in Benghazi appeared to receive little scrutiny in Washington. During the Qaddafi government there had not been a mission there, and in December 2011 Mr. Kennedy issued a memo to keep the Benghazi mission open for only a year.

Housed in a rented compound, the mission and a nearby annex used by the Central Intelligence Agency enabled the United States to interact with Libyans in the eastern part of the country from a city that had been the cradle of their revolution.

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But eastern Libya also had another face. Though the region had been a wellspring for the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi’s government, it was also known as one of the major sources of militants who traveled to Iraq in 2007 to join the main terrorist group there, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The number of State Department security agents at the compound in Benghazi fluctuated, sometimes dipping to as few as two. Five American security agents were at the compound on Sept. 11 — three stationed there and two traveling with Mr. Stevens.

In addition to the Americans, there were several armed Libyans who served as a quick-reaction force. The Americans were also able to call on the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, a militia supportive of the Libyan government. Yet another small group of Libyan guards stood watch at the gates and perimeter of the compound, but this group was unarmed and equipped with only whistles and batons.

When it came to weapons, the American security team was outgunned. The Americans were equipped with M4 rifles and side arms. But Libya was rife with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, mortars and AK-47s.

Much of the security depended on maintaining a low profile. When venturing into town, the Americans drove a Toyota Land Cruiser, from which they removed the diplomatic plates and which they intentionally did not wash. At one point, Mr. Nordstrom, the regional security officer, proposed establishing guard towers, but the State Department rejected that on the grounds that it would make the compound more conspicuous.

There was no doubt, however, that there were many in Benghazi who knew the compound’s location. On June 6, a bomb was planted near the American Mission’s outer wall, blowing out a 12-foot-wide hole. No one was injured.

On June 11, the lead vehicle of the British ambassador’s convoy was hit by an armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade, wounding a British medic and driver. The British envoy left Benghazi the next day, and the British post in the city was closed on June 17.

About the same time, the Red Cross in the city pulled out after it was attacked a second time. “When that occurred, it was apparent to me that we were the last flag flying in Benghazi; we were the last thing on their target list to remove,” said Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, the head of the military security team in Tripoli.

In the event of a significant attack, Mr. Oliveira noted, the Americans were counting on the February 17th Brigade to rush to their aid, as it had during the June 6 bombing. The embassy had also established a series of “trip wires,” classified benchmarks about intelligence on attack preparations or escalating unrest that would prompt the United States to evacuate the Benghazi compound. But the trip wires were not set off.

New security cameras with night vision capability were shipped to the Benghazi compound but were still sitting in crates when the September attack occurred.

The situation in eastern Libya, meanwhile, remained perilous. Small-scale camps grew out of training areas created last year by militias fighting Libyan government security forces. After the government fell, these compounds continued to churn out fighters trained in marksmanship and explosives, American officials said.

Ansar al-Shariah, a local militant group some of whose members had ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a local Qaeda affiliate, operated a militant training camp whose location was well known to Benghazi residents. On the Friday after the attack, demonstrators overran it.

American intelligence agencies had provided the administration with reports for much of the past year warning that the Libyan government was weakening and had little control over the militias, including Ansar al-Shariah.

By early September, some Libyan officials in Benghazi were echoing the same security warnings as Mr. Stevens was relaying to Washington.

American officials continue to investigate the militants who carried out the attack. A Tunisian, who was apprehended by Turkish officials on a flight from Benghazi to Turkey and repatriated to Tunisia, was also involved, American officials said. It is not yet clear if the attackers who participated in the assault were trained in the camps.

Looking back, Mr. Nordstrom told a House hearing last month that a major question was the inability of the administration to react to the worsening environment on the ground.

“I was extremely pleased with the planning to get us into Libya,” Mr. Nordstrom said. But after the initial security teams began rotating out of Libya months later, he said, “there was a complete and total absence of planning.”

Correction: October 31, 2012

An article on Tuesday about United States intelligence reports on security in eastern Libya before the Sept. 11 attack against the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi included an incorrect quotation from a State Department transcript of a briefing on Oct. 10. In the briefing to reporters, Patrick F. Kennedy, an under secretary of state, described the assault by militants as a “massed” attack, not a “masked” attack. (The State Department pointed out its error on Tuesday and has since corrected the transcript.)

A version of this article appears in print on October 30, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Libya Warnings Were Plentiful, But Unspecific. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe